Healthy breakfast, healthy grades at school, study shows

It's something that mothers have seemingly known for years, but now a major new study has provided strong evidence that having a healthy breakfast really does set you up for the day.

According to researchers at Cardiff University, pupils are twice as likely to achieve above average results in school if they eat breakfast.

The quality of the breakfast was also found to affect a child's academic success. Eating unhealthy items like sweets and crisps for breakfast, which was reported by 1 in 5 children, was found to have no positive impact on educational attainment.

The study, published in the Public Health Nutrition journal, examined the links between the breakfast habits of 5,000 nine to 11-year-olds from more than 100 primary schools in Wales, and their subsequent performance in Key Stage 2 tests later in the year.

"For schools, dedicating time and resource towards improving child health can be seen as an unwelcome diversion from their core business of educating pupils."

Hannah Littlecott

During the study, pupils were asked to list all food and drink consumed over a period of just over 24 hours, which included two breakfasts.

It was discovered that pupils who ate a healthy breakfast - including items such as cereals, breads and dairy products - were up to twice as likely to achieve an above average score in teacher assessments at the end of Key Stage 2 compared with those who did not.

Hannah Littlecott of Cardiff University and lead author of the study said that while eating breakfast has been associated with general health and improved concentration, "evidence regarding links to concrete educational outcomes has been unclear".

"For schools, dedicating time and resource towards improving child health can be seen as an unwelcome diversion from their core business of educating pupils," she said.

“But this resistance to delivery of health improvement interventions overlooks the clear synergy between health and education. Clearly, embedding health improvements into the core business of the school might also deliver educational improvements as well.”

According to the poll of 900 teachers, three quarters said that being hungry or thirsty made a child more lethargic, while 83 per cent said youngsters are unable to concentrate if they have not eaten properly.

Professor Chris Bonell, from the University College London Institute of Education, said that the research emphasised the need for schools to "focus on the health and education of their pupils as complementary, rather than as competing priorities."

"There has always been a sense that breakfast was linked to education performance, but we were lacking the hard data to demonstrate it."

Graham Moore

"Many schools throughout the UK now offer their pupils a breakfast," he said. "Ensuring that those young people most in need benefit from these schemes may represent an important mechanism for boosting the educational performance of young people throughout the UK”.

Dr Graham Moore, research fellow at Cardiff university and co-author of the report, told the Telegraph: "I think there has always been a sense that breakfast was linked to education performance, but we were lacking the hard data to demonstrate it.

"At the moment, most schools across England and Wales have got breakfast clubs in place, but it's not really clear whether these are reaching children who would not generally be getting a breakfast at home.

"If they were to find ways [to reach these children], this research provides evidence that it would improve educational outcomes.

He continued: "Often there is reluctance for schools to invest time and resources into health improvement, because it's seen as distracting from education, but actually this suggests that a focus on improving health behaviours will simultaneously improve education."

According to the latest figures, some 85 per cent of schools now have a breakfast club in place, while the Government has pledged £1.1 million over two years to fund the provision of breakfast clubs in 184 more schools with a high percentage of disadvantaged pupils.